


suffer the little children

by coldhope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Caretaking, Dreambubbles, F/F, Fluff, Grubs, Multi, ancestor grubs, for no really good reason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 07:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the meteor, Rose, Dave, Kanaya, Terezi, and Karkat find themselves passing through a series of hooked-together dreambubbles inhabited by some utterly inexplicable grubs. Grubs that squeak and fuss and cling and chew holes in their clothes. Grubs who resemble to a distressing extent trolls whom the meteor-dwellers killed or were killed by, but essentially grubs who need someone to see to them, even in dreambubbles out of time.</p><p>
  <b>
    <span class="u">THIS FIC HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.</span>
  </b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. this is a terrible idea

The purple one is the first to appear.

Mostly you and Rose and Dave and Terezi and Karkat have settled down into a sort of weird but predictable routine on board the meteor; you pass through dreambubbles and most of the time it’s okay but sometimes it does unkind things to you all and Rose holds you in the dark as you tremble and choke and try not to remember things. Rose is warm and sleek and porcelain-perfect in public, but when she’s alone with you she can make you laugh harder than anyone ever has. 

She tells you, one day, lying entwined with you in the bed she’s alchemized, that you make her want to be a slightly better person than she is--and that she knows this is utterly illogical but she can’t deny it--and you are struck dumb and can only kiss her until she stops saying words because nobody has ever said anything like that to you before. You nag; you are the auspistice; you are the voice of reason. Nobody has ever needed you the way Rose says she does. 

It’s a few nights after that when you hear the high-pitched wailing cry. That noise does things to the middle of you, where there is a hole tied up with your sash; that noise creeps right into your thinkpan, into the bottom insectoid regions of your mind, and fucking twists. You can’t not go in search of it. It is a wiggler’s cry, a grub’s cry, and you are, or you were, the keeper of the matriorb.

When you find it it’s so very little and yet the sight of it makes the part of you that isn’t there go cold and sick again. You can’t help seeing violet blood flung in great chainspatters into the air, the tug and resistance of flesh and the vibration-grate of bone against the blade in your hands, the deeply puzzled look in Ampora’s silver-purple eyes as half of him slid and toppled out of true. 

This creature is that same violet. This creature is. It’s. It has. It’s got little tiny zigzag horns and a wee purple streak in the black mess of its hair and its soft segmented body is the same violet you remember seeing arc and splash across tiles not dissimilar to these.

It’s so tiny, barely longer than your forearm, and it is curling and uncurling into a little round knot, waving its tiny grublegs in helpless need, and _you can’t stop seeing Ampora_ and you can’t stop struggling to breathe against the totally illogical genetic fucking drive to scoop it up in your arms and comfort it.

You fall to your knees, and the violet grub is distracted a little from its ongoing complaint about the shittiness of the universe and it blinks up at you with colorless silver eyes; somehow that helps, somehow that makes it easier to reach for it and then squeak when it wraps itself round your hands and clings with all its tiny grubleg feet. 

Oh, fuck. 

The moment you pick it up, the purple grub stops crying, and just burrows against you, hooking its little feet into your shirt and chewing tearfully on a fold of cloth. It’s cool to the touch, and you think that can’t be right, they have such fast metabolisms at this stage, oh, god, how long had it been lying there and where had it even come from, and without even thinking you undo your sash and wrap the grub up in the purple folds. 

They find you like that, Karkat and Terezi, and to their everlasting credit neither says anything at all about narrative causality. 

~

You don’t think this is an Eridan. At first of course that’s what you’d thought, he was the right color and he had the stupid horns and the fussy demanding neediness--but there’s something about the dim vague hints of bone structure under the rounded grubfat of his cheeks that you think has more of strength in it than petulance. You don’t know who he is yet--you’re certain that he doesn’t either, and so you hesitate to give him a name.

Rose tells you you’re predictable, and you throw a pellet of rolled-up bread at her across the table and then squeak because your grub has learned how to stick his forelegs in his mouth. To her credit Rose has to admit this is, in fact, ridiculously sweet, and she comes round to sit beside you and rest her chin on your shoulder, looking down at the silly bundle in your arms. “He has excellent horns,” she tells you, and...oh, god, you swell with _pride_ , what is even _wrong_ with you. 

(He does.)

Nights pass, and while you still can’t _explain_ your grub’s presence you are getting used to him, and so are the others. Dave apparently cannot get over how fucked-up it is for your species to have infantile larval forms, and throws up a welter of self-protective nonsense and babbling every time you and your little grape-soda grubling hove into view. It’s kind of hilarious, in a way. You know Terezi finds it funny, she can’t stop finding excuses to explain that to you. 

“Let me hold him,” she’d said. You are somewhat dismayed at the instant _no_ response your body comes up with, cradling him tighter in your arms, hunching over as if to protect him from some sort of unknowable threat. This is _Terezi_ , for God’s sake. She’s not going to harm your grub. 

He fusses unhappily as you set him in her arms and shows every sign of settling in for a good old wailing session, but Terezi...

Terezi _licks_ him, and that apparently throws even his tiny ill-developed grubling mind for a loop because he stops grizzling and just looks up at her with those wide silver eyes. 

“He tastes like purple drink,” Terezi pronounces, and gives him another lick, and this time he actually gurgles and reaches out with a foreleg to pat at her face. 

You are _not jealous in the least_.

You let yourself leave him with Terezi two nights later just for a little while, just long enough for you to take a deeply needed shower and then find Rose and try to make up for the past days of neglect with a brief but astonishingly intense session of xenobiological experimentation. 

Rose is lying with your head pillowed between her breasts--you will never get tired of looking at them, touching them, tasting them, they are so strange and wonderfully alien, this cooler flesh that mantles itself up to a hard little bud when you ghost your fingers or tongue over the little darker spot at the apex of each--and stroking your hair, when she says: “it suits you.”

“What does?” God, you’re still thrumming, you’re warm all through as if a fire has been lit in you and only very recently blown out and you already want more, even if you’re too sleepy to act on that desire. 

She taps the apex of your hooked horn. The little percussion goes all the way down your spine to flower in the still-subsiding embers in the center of you. “Motherhood. I look at you with him and it seems _right_ , Kanaya, and you know me well enough to understand how much I abhor statements of that vague fluffy kind of sensibility. You are very good with him and he is very fortunate you found him.”

You twist a little, pressing a kiss into the firm valley of her breastbone, and look her in the eyes. “It could have been any of us.”

“But it wasn’t. It was you. And I think that’s something that did not come as an accident.”

Rose’s long fingers drift through your hair, draw circles on the nape of your neck, and all at once you _need_ her again, you can’t wait for another opportunity, and you hiss softly and wriggle until your legs are twined with hers and you lean in ever so carefully to bite. 

~

Terezi doesn’t seem to mind that you took far longer than you’d predicted: when you come to find her, your grublet is curled on her lap in a little purple pillbug-knot, deeply asleep and quite at peace. You can’t read her expression--not that you ever could--but she doesn’t look all that sarcastically knowing as you sit down beside her. 

“Sorry,” you start to say, but she waves a hand.

“It’s fine. Me and little grapeface here sniffed some books, did some legal interpretation. --Kanaya?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you think it was just him who showed up?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why he exists in the first place, let alone why a dreambubble with him in it intersected with our meteor.” You swallow. “Or how long it’ll last.”

Terezi makes a face. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I don’t know how long he’ll...be with us.” You carefully, carefully scoop your grub into your arms: he’s so deeply asleep he doesn’t even murmur. “But while he is I’m glad you don’t mind watching him a little.”

“Mind is not the word I would have used.” Terezi yawns; it’s contagious, after a moment you do too. “Go on to rest. I hereby state my willingness to grubsit.”

“Going to take you up on that,” you say, and you carry your little purple bundle off to your respiteblock. 

The next thing you know there’s someone shouting in the hallway--a very, very familiar shout, the sort you don’t even need to hear clearly to be able to translate into _fuckdammit what the actual shit is even going on here am i actually being bothered with this lukewarm shitsplatter of a situation argh argh argh_ to know it is Karkat Vantas out of sorts. 

By the time you’ve dressed and seen to your grub, the focus of shouting has moved from the hallway directly outside your door to the meal-preparation block, and you are not _entirely_ surprised to find Karkat has a tiny hissing mustard-yellow grub firmly attached to the top of his head and sending out minute red-blue psionic sparks.


	2. Chapter 2

The mustard-yellow grub has--oh dear God--the tiniest, tiniest little twinned horns, and that hurts a little too. You know Sollux isn’t all-the-way dead, he’s sort of semi-dead, but he’s with Aradia somewhere beyond your comprehension and you won’t see him for another sweep and a half--and seeing his particular headgear on another creature makes you sharply aware of his absence. You think probably Vantas feels the same way, judging by the genuine distress on his face under the standard _I’M FURIOUS_ slap he wears the way Makara wears his clownface. 

That distress might also be due to the fact that the grub is sparking all over the place like a poorly insulated junction box, and the sharp smell of ozone in the air tells you that while his psionics are as tiny as the rest of him they probably still sting. 

“GET IT OFF,” Karkat is saying. Dave is staying well back, trying to look cool and failing utterly; Terezi reaches out to pick the grub off Karkat’s head and yelps when he zaps her. Rose is rummaging under the preparation block’s sink, and comes out with what look like rubber gloves. 

“Shoosh him,” she tells Karkat calmly, and gets an incredulous _what the stupid shitsquirting fuck_ look for her pains. “Shoosh him or this is going to be nastier for both of you.”

You can tell he’s about to explode at her when the grub sends out another hissy spark and he visibly changes his mind, halfheartedly reaching up to pap the thing clinging to his head, doing that low harmonic _shoooosh_ that reaches into trolls’ pans and spreads out like cream over a burn. It distracts the grub a little, and in that moment Rose leans in and firmly unhooks tiny grub-feet from Karkat’s horns and lifts the grub away from him, the gloves insulating her from the worst of the sparking--although you can see it hurts her too. 

Her handful wriggles frantically in her grip and _wails_. Your own passenger, who has been anxiously clinging to your shirt this whole time, decides it’s a fine opportunity to join in the chorus, and sets up a wail of his own, and by the time you’ve convinced him the world isn’t ending all over again and got him to settle down and just press his face against your shoulder, Rose has...deposited the mustard grub in Karkat’s arms?

You blink at her, and then back at Karkat, whose face is all crinkled up in helpless anxiety and unhappiness, and then he shooshes his armful again and hesitantly touches the little screwed-up miserable face with a forefinger. Psionics crackle blue and red and he winces, but--yes, he’s Karkat, and you watch him tentatively give small grub-temples a rub, and visibly relax when this seems to soothe the baby. 

“--Fuck,” he says, hoarsely. “Fuck. I think...can grubs get headaches? He’s acting just like...”

“Like Captor, only with fewer lispy and creative insults?” Rose asks, stripping off the gloves. “Yes. I imagine they can. If I were you I’d take him somewhere dark and quiet for a bit.”

“But I don’t--I--jesus fuck, Lalonde, what the hell am I supposed to do with a grub?”

“Don’t ask me,” says Rose, and the look she gives you is half-and-half _I’m sorry_ and _I’m not sorry at all._ You roll your eyes and sigh, glad your own grub has apparently calmed down enough to be drooling sleepily on your shirt. Karkat follows Rose’s gaze and the look _he_ gives you is _all_ pleading.

You sigh. “Terezi, are you at all interested in being the synesthetic auntie for a bit?”

“Gimme.”

Turning away from the edifying sight of Terezi Pyrope licking your grub’s face, you usher Karkat out of the preparation block past a still-blinking Dave Strider.

~

“I don’t....why won’t he let _go_ of me?” 

You have spent the past ten minutes trying to explain to Karkat the basics of grub care and feeding, and you have the feeling all of your wisdom has gone straight through his head and out the other side without registering in his pan. The little mustard grub is still _clinging_ tight to him, all six tiny grublegs firmly hooked into his shirt; Karkat has let go once or twice and the grub is so solidly attached that nothing happened. “That’s not a useful question to ask just now. For _whatever_ reason, he feels safe with you, and that’s important; especially just so soon after he’s arrived. We don’t know how long they’ve been without a carer. We don’t...know a lot about them, period.”

Karkat’s hanger-on gives the tiniest of little sneezes, complete with blue-red sparks, and you sigh. “He’s smaller than Violet. Does he feel cool to the touch?”

Your erstwhile leader hesitantly cups a hand round the soft yellow body. “A bit, I guess? Cooler than me, anyway.”

“I think they need to be warmer than that.” You get up off the bed and go to find him a shawl to wrap the baby in. “Here. And they like to be petted, or at least Violet does. He’s settled down a lot but whatever that was you were doing with the head-rubs seemed to help.”

“It’s just, uh. Sollux would always do that when he had a headache, it was like this stupid nervous tic thing...”

“Well, keep doing that. He’s probably hungry too. I’ve been feeding mine with milk and little tiny bits of chopped-up alchemized meat.” Thank God yours isn’t a fussy eater. You have a feeling this one may well be difficult to feed. “Is he--yes, he’s still clinging super tight. I would suggest you just hold him and settle him down until he’s not in immediate-fear-of-detachment mode and then try to get some food into him.”

“Kanaya--” Karkat’s voice is pleading. “Seriously, what the fuck am I going to do, I can’t possibly be a, a, a lusus, this is like totally outside any kind of skill set to which I can even remotely lay claim, can’t you take him?”

“I have one already,” you remind him. “And he doesn’t want me; he cried when I tried to hold him. You’ve been chosen, I’m afraid.”

“This is _such complete hoofbeastshit_ ,” Karkat says and looks down again at the creature stuck to his shirt. It wriggles a little and opens its mouth in a tiny yawn to show a minute bifurcated tongue. You’re in time to catch the look of desperate helpless tenderness that flickers across Karkat’s face, and you think it might be all right after all. 

~

Violet is chewing on Terezi’s fingers when you arrive to retrieve him, and you hurry to apologize, but she’s grinning her shark-grin. “I could get used to this auntie business, Maryam,” she says, and bites her black lip as your grub, upon detachment, mewls and waves his little legs in protest. “How’s tiny baby Sollux?”

“I don’t know if he’s a Sollux or what,” you say, and lift Violet up to nuzzle his face; he crows happily and wriggles in your hands. “He’s a psionic, at least, and he’s a fretful little creature, but I think--I hope--Vantas has sufficient instincts to deal with him. Poor little button, being a grub _and_ having those headaches, that doesn’t strike me as fair.”

Terezi makes a face. “Bluh. But Karkat is the best at shooshpapping, it is totally him. I can’t stop seeing his _face_ when the baby was all stuck to his head, did you see how tight it was hanging on to his horns? Never going to forget that image.”

“I know,” you have to admit. Violet settles comfortably back clinging to your shirt, and you think maaaybe you can get on with finding some goddamned coffee and something to eat and then getting on with what you had actually planned for the night, which is another chapter of one of the most precious commodities on the meteor: Karkat’s romance novels. And sewing. You’ve been sewing even more obsessively of late. 

And if possible you might spend some time with Rose. 

~

You are, in fact, in bed with Rose when a rhythmic but hesitant tapping comes at the door of the respiteblock. By your internal sense of time it’s the middle of the goddamned day and you are going to consider really carefully if you need to bring out your chainsawkind based on whoever the hell is disturbing you at this hour. Careful not to wake either Rose or the baby curled in his nest of pillows not far from the bed, you pad over to the door and open it enough to stare down at Dave Strider, capeless and barefoot and looking younger than you have _ever_ seen him look. 

“...Strider,” you say. “What is it.”

“Uh. Kanaya. Can. Can you come look at something.”

“It’s the middle of the day, Strider, _what is your emergency_ that it cannot wait till tonight?” You’re not in the mood for him. You’re rarely in the mood for him. 

“Please,” he says, and it’s the verbal equivalent of taking off those stupid goddamn sunglasses he is still wearing despite the dim lighting of the corridor: you hear a voice unlike his studied expressionless drawl, a voice that might belong to a real person. 

You hold up a finger: one moment. The Knight of Time no doubt has his own opinions on what constitutes a moment, but you don’t particularly care to consider them, and you go find a robe and throw it on before rejoining him and closing the respiteblock door carefully behind you. “Now. What the hell is wrong? Are you sick? Has Gamzee taken over your human lair?”

“It’s, uh, it’s.” Wow. You’ve never heard Strider this ineloquent. “Another grub.”

You shut up and just gesture for him to precede you.


	3. Chapter 3

You hear the new arrival long before you see it. Strider is sort of hunched over, arms wrapped around himself, as far from cool as you have ever seen him: when he palms open the door to his lair you are...not tremendously surprised to see that the grub curling and uncurling frantically on the rumpled surface of his bed is pure teal, with tiny conical horns. 

“--You just left it,” you say, staring at him, and Strider hunches further into himself, not looking at you. 

“I didn’t know what to do. I. I. What the fuck. It just. Appeared.”

You nudge him aside and go to scoop up the teal grub, who hiccups and stops wailing for a moment when you wrap it--you think it’s a her for no good reason--in your arms. Poor little mite. “Where? On the floor? On your bed?”

“In--uh. In the ablution block.”

You glance up at him and he looks so small and lost that you can’t not take pity. “Well. You have a grub now, Mister Strider. You have a grub whether you like it or not and it is your responsibility to keep her warm and fed and comforted. Come here.”

The teal grub is very delicate but just as insistent and she is trying to bite holes in your robe, which you take as a good sign. She’s rather beautiful, even if you have to extrapolate from bones mostly hidden under grubfat. Longer, spiky dark hair falls all over the place as she curls up in your arms and clings with all her little grublegs.

You are aware, peripherally, of Strider sort of looking disenfranchised: excellent. Good. He joins you: you walk him over to his bed and sit on the edge with the grub still cradled in your arms. “Did she wake you?”

“Yeah. I was, uh. I was having a kind of not so awesome dream so it was like I wasn’t sure if it was real or still part of the dream and then--uh.” He hunches his shoulders. “Then she sort of scuttled across the floor and I was like this is not something I have ever dreamed and also holy shit this is real.”

You nod and coo softly to the grub, who is still chewing on your robe but less energetically now. Strider blinks. “Um. She kind of looks like.”

“Yes, I know. We now have a violet, a gold, and a teal. I wonder who’ll show up next.” Carefully you detach the grublegs from your robe and deposit her in Strider’s awkward grip: she squeals and wriggles and he sort of clutches at her helplessly and then she grabs a fold of his shirt in her teeth and settles solidly against his chest. His hands--softer than yours, lots softer--creep up to cradle her delicate little body. 

“--She’s soft,” he says, and you think he probably didn’t mean to say it, judging by the way he goes pink. But the teal grub seems to be contenting herself with chewing holes in his shirt and doesn’t mind his awkward cuddles; you think, actually, this might be all right. 

“She is, and she needs to be kept warm, and she’ll probably want to be held all the time, they’re extremely insecure when they’re brand-new like this. You can make a sling out of a scarf or something, that’s what I’ve done with Violet. But right now honestly just go back to bed, okay? You won’t roll over on her and squish her. Promise.”

Strider swallows hard and hugs the grub a little tighter to his chest: she wriggles and squeaks softly. You think they’re likely to make it through the night. 

As he bends over her she reaches up with a couple of flaily uncoordinated grublegs and catches the frame of his iconic shades--and you have to give him credit for not freaking out as she tugs them off his face. Revealed, his eyes are bright scarlet, like Karkat’s will be in a few sweeps: but the shadows under them are bruised violet, and he looks a lot younger than his sister ever has. 

“Now,” you say, reaching over to take the shades away from the grub. “No glasses. Glasses are not yours to play with, dearling. Behave.”

He swallows hard and turns that bright red gaze on you: you meet it with a poker face of pure and perfect blankness, and set the glasses gently back on his face. “In the evening you can join me and Vantas in the wonderful exciting world of grub feeding, but for now I suggest you try and get some more rest.”

Strider swallows and nods. “--Yeah. Um. Thanks.”

You get off the bed. You think on the whole you’re learning as much about your comrades on this meteor as you are about the tiny new arrivals. 

~

Karkat does not look as if he’s had a ton of sleep. He never looks like he’s had a ton of sleep but the circles under his eyes are truly impressive tonight, black under the grey, and he isn’t bothering to open the eyes themselves all the way. You reflect that it isn’t really fair he has the best eyelashes on the meteor: they go utterly unappreciated by their owner. 

He’s carrying the grub in a clumsy sort of sling against his chest and sitting at the preparation-block table hunched over a cup of coffee when you come in; he looks up. “Mngh. How the annelid fuck do you jades _do_ this?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never done it myself. Will it cheer you up, however, if I tell you you can now point and laugh at Strider for being even less use with a grub than yourself?” Coffee. Coffee is a thing that needs to happen. Violet is riding on your shoulder and cooing to himself, which is adorable but sort of difficult to ignore. 

“Huh?”

Karkat the parent is Karkat the inarticulate. You settle at the table with your own cup and grin at him. “Strider woke me up in the middle of the day. He’s got one too. He’s kind of terrified.”

You can watch as this sinks in, and then a smile starts to appear, starts to _develop_ like an exposed photoplate. Karkat looks down at his slingful of grub and then back at you and he’s _grinning_. “Let me guess,” he says. “Brown or teal?”

“Teal. And she likes chewing on things. With tiny very sharp little teeth.” 

He snickers. “Okay, yeah, that makes up for a lot of this little asshole’s yelling and flailing. Not all of it, but a lot. It’d help if they could, like, _tell us_ what they’re screaming about.”

“Process of elimination. Cold, hungry, tired, hurting, or just crying because they’ve sort of forgotten why they started but can’t think of a reason to stop.” Violet bonks his face against your neck: you’re not paying _all the attention_ to him, obviously, that needs to be rectified. “Has it been difficult to get him to eat?”

“Oh my God,” Karkat says, closing his eyes for a moment. “I think he’s defective. Malfunctioning.”

“Fussy is the term generally approved for use.” You are exceedingly glad that Violet doesn’t seem to be a picky eater, or prone to spitting up: Karkat’s shirt has a couple of stains that suggest his little psionic is both. At the moment, of course, the grub is peacefully sleeping and looking as adorable as it is possible to look when you are sort of shaped like a pepper with a head. 

“ _Fussy_. How about _eruptive_. Or _fountainous_. Which isn’t even a word, but jesus this little creep has trouble keeping food down. You can try, maybe I’m doing it wrong. I’m _undoubtedly_ doing it wrong, this is so not anything close to shit I’m halfway competent at.”

“Some of them are just like that,” you say, and prevent Violet from toppling off your shoulder in an especially energetic wriggle. “Some of them are just acrobatic, aren’t you? You darling.” He chirps at you, and you have to pet his tiny little zigzag horns. Across the table Karkat glowers at you, but you see him looking down at his own grub with that brief soft look of tenderness you’re sure he doesn’t know he’s doing. 

Then he looks up and his eyes go wide, and you turn to see Rose with her arm around Dave and a smirk of ineffable, brilliant, purest amusement on her face. 

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” says Karkat. Dave’s face is almost as red as his eyes and he’s not wearing his cape: he is, in fact, holding a bundle wrapped up in his cape that is waving tiny grublegs in the air. 

“No,” says Rose, “Dave Strider, and his precious baby girl.”

~

Terezi falls in love with the teal grub at first sight--or, all right, at first taste. It is extremely disconcerting to see her holding a tiny grub version of herself, both of them enthusiastically trying to sniff and lick each other’s faces; you can tell Dave’s having a hard time watching, and you almost feel sorry for the human. Rose, on the other hand, is just deeply amused by the entire situation, and abandons her brother to come wrap her arm round your waist and tickle Violet’s tummy. “I wonder if there’s a tiny you somewhere out there.”

“--I hope not,” you say, a little nonplussed. “That would be...weird.”

“Everything about our lives is weird, darling. What about a tiny Karkat? It would never ever ever stop screaming, let’s hope we _don’t_ get a tiny Karkat. But a tiny you would be adorable. Little miniature horns.”

“Should I find this disturbing? Because I find this disturbing.”

Rose smiles, and her hand on your waist tightens. “Actually, I predict that the next one to show up will be cerulean. After that I don’t know; that might be it. I don’t really think I’m slated for grub-parenthood.”

Violet wraps his grublegs round her fingers and blows bubbles at her. “--I can perhaps handle _co-_ grub-parenthood,” she adds. “Yes, you are objectively cute as a button or other small clothes-fastening device, and you know it, don’t you?”

He gurgles, and grabs a finger, and stuffs it in his mouth. Rose rolls her eyes, but she lets him drool on her, and she rests her chin on your shoulder and holds you close. You notice absently that Karkat and Dave appear to be...speaking civilly to one another, possibly brought together in the bond of shared sleep deprivation, and you think maybe these inexplicable little creatures are doing the lot of you some actual good.


	4. Chapter 4

After that nobody new appears for a few nights. You teach Karkat what you can about the feeding of grubs, and the little yellow psionic does seem to be spitting up less than he did. He is _so_ sweet, though, when he isn't emitting various fluids, that it's almost impossible to mind. The teeny twinned horns are desperately adorable, as are his little blue-scarlet sparks except for when he gets you somewhere particularly sensitive with them--he seems to be getting better at not zapping people except when he's obviously unhappy. 

Violet is getting more and more interested in exploration, and you have to wrap him up in your sash to stop him scuttling off and damaging himself while you're doing things like washing dishes. And Terezi and Dave seem to have taken it on themselves to care for the little teal grub together, which makes Rose grin all over her face and burst out snickering for absolutely no obvious reason--which is also objectively adorable, and you are so stupidly flushed for her it almost scares you. 

"What's going to happen," you say to her, one day in bed. "When we get there. At the end of this."

Rose runs a fingertip up your hooked horn; that always makes you shiver. "I don't know. That is I don't know specifics. There are a lot of voices in my head, and it's difficult to decide which of them is the least inaccurate."

"Ngh." You don't like to think of the voices in her head, or the creatures whose voices they are. Her grimdark episode frightens you every time you're reminded of it. "But we'll have to face him, won't we."

"Oh, yes. Of that there's no doubt." She sighs and props herself up on an elbow. "And then if we win there will be a new universe of some description. Do you know, Kanaya, it was only months ago that I thought there was just the one universe, slightly foxed round the edges but with a couple more aeons left in it, and now I find past me laughably shortsighted."

"We all do. Our past selves, I mean." In your dim glow her skin is the same silvery-pale as her hair, her eyes almost black but sparking pale violet as she focuses them. "We were all very...young. Before the game."

"We still are," Rose points out. You reach over and trace the line of her shoulder, her forearm, warm and smooth under your touch. "When we get there we'll still be children by my culture's reckoning, but I don't think that reckoning takes into account the whole inter-universal fight for our lives aspect."

You have to chuckle, and she smiles at you, her bare lips curving softly. "I find your alien culture illogical and strange."

"As do I." She nods, and reaches over to relocate a stray lock of your hair. "I think you were asking about us, though, weren't you."

"Yes," you admit. 

Rose pauses for a moment before she replies, her hand still cupped to the side of your face. She is so warm compared to you. So fragile, and yet she has a core of strength inside all that tearable skin and breakable bone that you don't think has yet been fully sounded. "Whatever happens," she says at last, "wherever we end up, I will make every effort to be beside you; and if we're separated I will do anything to find you, Kanaya, because to be desperately sentimental and unoriginal as all hell, a universe in which you are not is no universe at all."

"Oh," you say, only slightly unsteadily, "good, because that's what I was going to say," and kiss her. You taste her sharp bright blood, your fangs have nicked her lip, and by the way her arms go round you and her fingers slide down your back she does not mind at all, and...

"God damn it," she says into the kiss, over the thin little wail of an unhappily suddenly-awake grub. "Is it your turn or mine?"

"Mine, I'm pretty sure." You kiss her again for good measure. "Wretched little creature."

"Clearly he has high moral values and does not wish your virtue besmirched."

"He's a bit late for that," you say, and sigh, and haul yourself out of bed. Your dressing-gown is dark green, of course, with your symbol embroidered on the pocket, and now has little tiny snags all over the satin from grublegs. It's about time you made yourself a new one. "All right, I'm coming, I'm coming, don't wake the whole meteor..."

Violet is curling and uncurling, waving his little legs around pathetically, and bawling like a milkbeast. You scoop him up and cuddle him, and he promptly clings to you with all three sets of legs, and again you're suddenly breathless, gulping with tenderness. "Shoooosh, darling, shooosh, what is it, what's wrong?"

He stops crying long enough to hiccup several times, and then demonstrates what's wrong all down your front. Damn. You hope this is just the result of letting him have the second helping of...oh, what the hell did you even feed him anyway...before bed and _not_ some kind of virus, because you really truly don't need to pick it up yourself. You sigh and carry him through to the ablution block. 

He seems to be feeling a little better after unburdening himself, grizzling rather than wailing outright, and you clean him up and dab at your dressing-gown which may actually at this point be a lost cause. In the mirror you look....

...well, you look disheveled, is one way to put it, your lips dark-green and slightly swollen from kissing, your hair sticking up every which way, but you are surprised to see that you seem to look _happier_ than you have done in a long time. Why that should be when you've just been thrown up on by a grub in the middle of the day, you do not know, but it's a fact. 

You change, and carry him back to your respiteblock, glad to see that he doesn't feel noticeably warmer than usual, and that he's calmed down almost completely with your ministrations. Poor little thing, you think, cuddling him and stroking his tiny horns, sitting with him beside what Rose calls his crib. Poor grublet. 

He goes to sleep in only a few minutes, and you set him down in the crib and cover him with the blanket, and of course the second you put him down he wakes up and starts to wail. 

Sigh.

There's the whisper of silk and the faint sound of bare feet, and Rose materializes out of the darkness beside your chair as you lift him back into your arms. "Bring him back to bed," she says softly. He whimpers against your nightshirt.

"He's been sick, I don't know if he's coming down with something..."

"If he is, we'll know soon anyway. Come to bed, love."

Her hand is on your shoulder, and....yes, all right, you think, and follow her. Thank God, Violet has settled down to snuffling. Rose settles against the pillows and you lean against her, your grub still cradled in your arms, and she kisses the top of your head. "No universe at all without you," she says. "Remember."

You don't dream. 

~

In the evening you're heavy-eyed and slow to get going. "Bad day?" Karkat asks, making coffee with his grub slung against his chest and drooling enthusiastically on him. 

"Mmh." Violet hadn't been ill again, and you hope it was just a dietary indiscretion. He seems pretty subdued this evening, though, if disinclined to let go of people, and Rose has cling-on duty for the time being. "I have had better. No sign of Strider or Terezi?"

"Not so far." He pours you a cup, adding sugar the way you like it. "I am trying very goddamn hard not to consider what it is they might be doing. Very hard."

"It might be good for him." You wrap your hands round the cup, breathe in the steam. "Thank you.--I mean, interpersonal relationships and so on don't seem to be his strong point."

"Understatement of the sweep, Maryam," he says. "--Aw, hell, not _again_...Kid, what have I told you time and time again about chewing holes in my goddamn shirts? I have to find you a chew toy. A....psionic-proof chew toy."

You can't help smiling. The grub doesn't look remotely remorseful, gazing up at Karkat with wide mismatched eyes. "I can darn your sweater, you know."

Karkat looks up at you. "Yeah?"

"Of course. I can also fix those holes in the sleeves while I'm at it."

"Don't you dare, I like those holes." He has his thumbs stuck through them, you've never understood the appeal. "But the grub gnawing shit could do with fixing."

"Just drop them off at my respiteblock, I'll do that tonight." You reach over and give the outer of the left-hand pair of grub horns a little rub, and are rewarded with a little chirp and trill. "--He really is _terribly_ adorable. And you seem to be doing better with the whole...situation."

"I guess I'm getting used to it," Karkat says. "Or just losing enough brain cells due to lack of sleep that I no longer notice shit. Probably the latter. Where's yours?"

"Rose has him." You yawn hugely, and take a gulp of coffee. "It's not really fair that you're a single parent and both Dave and I have someone sharing the load."

"Mm. Better than the alternative," he says, and you think of Makara suddenly, skulking somewhere in the depths of the dark labs, and are cold all through. Shit. Karkat never talks about his moirail.

"I didn't mean--"

"No, it's okay. It's cool." Karkat reaches over and covers your hand with his, looking earnestly at you. After a moment you nod, and lace your fingers with his. 

He doesn't know--he's never known--how good he really is, how capable and kind and smart and caring. You hope maybe he's getting a hint of that now, with the clear and present demand for all those things: he's doing it, he's making it hapen. 

You are glad he's with you, and will be with you, when you reach the end of this journey. Karkat makes you feel safe, a different safety than you find in Rose, who has powers you don't understand and can't fathom. Karkat will just shout at the cosmos until it bloody well behaves itself, and that is a stupidly comfortable thought.


End file.
